Lessons from my grandmother

St. Patrick’s Day always reminds me of my mother’s mother, the original Catherine Durkin. It was her favorite holiday. As I get older, I often think of her and how she taught by example…

This oldie but goodie is for her.

Ode to Kitty

To her nine grandchildren, of which I was oldest, she’ll always be “Nana,” but friends and family affectionately called her “Kitty.”

Every winter for seventeen years, Kitty came to Florida and lived with us. We got along surprising well. Four of us listened, talked, laughed, and digested my mother’s meat loaf in less than 1600 square feet – without killing each other.

My siblings and I will never walk by a cosmetics counter and not recall the woman who insisted on Clinique because “Oil of Olay puts hair on your face.” Through our Nana, we discovered the miracles of Lestoil, appreciation for Westerns, and, especially, how to grow old with dignity and humor.

In other words, the woman ruined us.

As a result, we have little patience or sympathy for anyone who brings down a room with moans and groans.

According to medical records, Nana suffered from macular degeneration, congestive heart failure, severe arthritis and several other ailments. I use the term “medical records” because she never talked about her problems. Not once. If you asked about her health, she’d always say, “I’m fine.” Nana believed it, too. And so she was fine.

That’s how it worked.

We lived in a little house off a busy street. She would walk to McDonald’s every day because their coffee was the only kind she liked. It didn’t matter to her that she was blind.

Once the police stopped her because an elderly person had escaped a local nursing home and Nana fit the description. She giggled after finally convincing him she wasn’t an escapee and he let her go about her business.

She shopped at the Dollar Store and socialized with clerks at Albertson’s before making her way back home.

We’d lecture her about the dangers of a blind woman with fragile bones walking along a highway, but she’d tell us to “be the hush.” Eventually we’d give up, smile, and admire her some more.

She loved being around young people – entertaining our friends, partying at O’Brien’s for St. Patrick’s Day and digging our music. During my heavy metal years, Nana would rock out to Whitesnake.

Can you imagine an octogenarian lip-synching “Slide It In” while folding laundry?

Florida’s beautiful weather and my mother’s kindness drew northern visitors and certain relatives got on our collective nerves. Not Nana. She never evoked anything other than delight with her presence. Kitty’s secret ingredient is a mystery to me still, but I wish more people possessed it.

She was tough, opinionated, and saucy. And we loved every minute we were blessed enough to share with her.

When she left us all on a cool September day back in 1998, no one wanted her to go.

But she was ready.

I remember thinking, that’s what happens at the end of a long life lived well. Death is embraced because another adventure awaits.

My mother has inherited those same traits as she enters her own senior-discount years. My sons learn from her ability to laugh through aches and pains because she prefers instead to concentrate on the blessings of watching grandchildren grow up.

But aren’t toughies a dying breed? People who aren’t suffering nearly as much use old age as an excuse to die instead of live.

Sometimes I grow frustrated with complainers and brag about Nana. I tell stories and relish the memories of a woman who never gave in to self-pity and remained independent for eighty-nine years.

I’d like to tell people both young and old, “Quit complaining and get moving!”

That’s what Kitty would have said. That’s what Kitty did.